FAA Command Center
The FAA has a Command Center at Herndon, Virginia. Timeline pre 2001 October 25, 1999: Golfer Payne Stewart Dies in Plane Crash; Incident Raises Questions about Shooting Down Off-Course Planes A map showing the planned flight path of Payne Stewart’s plane and the crash site location. CNN A runaway Learjet crashes near Mina, South Dakota, after flying on autopilot for several hours. On board is champion golfer Payne Stewart, along with five others. It is believed the accident is due to a loss of cabin pressure at high altitude, which would have caused all on board to go unconscious from lack of oxygen. NEWS, 10/25/1999; WASHINGTON POST, 10/26/1999; NATIONAL TRANSPORTATION SAFETY BOARD, 11/28/2000 After air traffic controllers lost contact with the plane, it was tracked by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), assisted by several Air Force and Air National Guard fighters and an AWACS radar control plane, up until when it crashed. It was also tracked on radar screens inside the National Military Command Center in the Pentagon. 10/26/1999 The Learjet had departed Orlando, Florida at 9:19 a.m., bound for Texas. The FAA says controllers lost contact with it at 9:44 a.m. POST, 10/26/1999 , but according to a later report by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) the plane first failed to respond to air traffic control at 9:33 a.m., after which the controller repeatedly tried to make contact for the next 4 1/2 minutes, without success. TRANSPORTATION SAFETY BOARD, 11/28/2000 NORAD’s Southeast Air Defense Sector was notified of the emergency at 9:55 a.m. COMMISSION, 7/24/2004, PP. 459 At 10:08 a.m., two F-16 fighters from Tyndall Air Force Base, Florida that were on a routine training mission had been asked by the FAA to intercept the Learjet, but never reached it. At about 10:52 a.m., a fighter from Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, was directed to within 9 miles of it, and at around 11:00 a.m. began a visual inspection of the plane. It accompanied the Learjet from 11:09 to 11:44 a.m. At 11:59 a.m., according to early accounts, four Air National Guard fighters and a refueling tanker from Tulsa, Oklahoma were told to chase the Learjet, but got no closer than 100 miles from it. However, the NTSB later claims that two Tulsa fighters were with it between 12:25 and 12:39 p.m., and were able to visually inspect it. At 12:54 p.m., two Air National Guard fighters from Fargo, North Dakota intercepted the Learjet. Soon after 1:14 p.m., it crashed in swampland, after spiraling to the ground. POST, 10/26/1999; ASSOCIATED PRESS, 10/27/1999; NATIONAL TRANSPORTATION SAFETY BOARD, 11/28/2000 During its flight, the FAA had routed air traffic around the Learjet, and made sure no other planes flew beneath it, due to the danger of it crashing. PRESS, 10/26/1999 There is some discussion as to what could have been done had the plane been on a collision course with a populated area, with CNN reporting, “Only the president has the authority to order a civilian aircraft shot down.” Pentagon spokesman Ken Bacon says the military has no written instructions for shooting down manned civilian planes. According to a 1997 military instruction, the shooting down of unmanned objects such as missiles requires prior approval from the secretary of defense. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE, 7/31/1997 ; CNN, 10/26/1999 A Pentagon spokesman says the fighters that monitored the Learjet had no missiles, but two other fighters on “strip alert” at Fargo had been armed but didn’t take off. 10/26/1999 The 9/11 Commission will later compare NORAD’s response to this incident with its response to Flight 11 on 9/11, and claim: “There is no significant difference in NORAD’s reaction to the two incidents.” COMMISSION, 7/24/2004, PP. 459 Entity Tags: Payne Stewart, Federal Aviation Administration, North American Aerospace Defense Command, National Military Command Center, Eglin Air Force Base, Tyndall Air Force Base, Southeast Air Defense Sector Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline 2001 March 2001: Former Air Traffic Controler Offered Position of National Operations Manager; Only Begins Job on September 11 Ben Sliney, a former air traffic controller and FAA manager who has been working as a lawyer in the private sector for many years, is offered the position of national operations manager at the FAA’s Command Center in Herndon, Virginia. The offer is made by Jack Kies, the FAA’s manager of tactical operations. Sliney agrees to return to the FAA but asks to work first as a traffic management specialist at the Command Center, to learn the learn the operational details of the center from the ground up. After six months, Kies will again approach Sliney and offer him the job of national operations manager, and Sliney will accept it. His first day in the post will in fact be September 11. 2008, PP. 1-2 Entity Tags: Ben Sliney, Jack Kies, Federal Aviation Administration Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline June 1, 2001: Revised Hijacking Procedure Outlines Defense Department Responsibilities A military instruction is issued by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, outlining the procedure for dealing with hijackings within the United States. The instruction, titled “Aircraft Piracy (Hijacking) and Destruction of Derelict Airborne Objects,” states that “the administrator, Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), has exclusive responsibility to direct law enforcement activity related to actual or attempted aircraft piracy (hijacking) in the ‘special aircraft jurisdiction’ of the United States. When requested by the administrator, Department of Defense will provide assistance to these law enforcement efforts.” It adds that the National Military Command Center (NMCC) within the Pentagon “is the focal point within Department of Defense for providing assistance. In the event of a hijacking, the NMCC will be notified by the most expeditious means by the FAA. The NMCC will, with the exception of immediate responses as authorized by reference d, forward requests for DOD assistance to the secretary of defense for approval.” DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE, 6/1/2001 Some will later assume that this requirement for defense secretary approval was new with this instruction. YORK OBSERVER, 6/20/2004 But it has in fact been a requirement since 1997, when the previous instruction was issued, if not earlier. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE, 7/31/1997 Although the defense secretary has this responsibility, the 9/11 Commission will conclude that, on the day of 9/11, the “secretary of defense did not enter the chain of command until the morning’s key events were over.” COMMISSION, 7/24/2004, PP. 15 Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld will later incorrectly claim that, up to 9/11, terrorism and domestic hijackings were “a law enforcement issue.” COMMISSION, 3/23/2004; PBS, 3/25/2004; US DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE, 6/14/2005 Entity Tags: National Military Command Center, US Department of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, Federal Aviation Administration Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline sept 11 sept 12 September 12, 2001: Air Force Utilizes New Radar Command Center; Device Overcomes Vulnerabilities Seen on 9/11 A JBECC unit. Air Force The US Air Force turns to a new type of device to improve NORAD’s air surveillance capabilities for the East Coast. The new system, called the Joint Based Expeditionary Connectivity Center, or JBECC, is a sophisticated mobile radar command center. It is housed inside a Humvee. Once the vehicle is parked, a tent can be expanded to allow additional screens and communication equipment to be laid out and used. Brown International, the Alabama-based company behind it, received an urgent call from an Air Force commander on the evening of 9/11, requesting the new system. A cargo plane was sent to pick it up immediately. PRESS, 11/29/2004 On September 12, the JBECC prototype is deployed to Naval Air Station Oceana in Virginia. It links the CONR (NORAD’s Continental US Region) Air Operations Center into AWACS and other East Coast radars. 2003, PP. 143 The principal innovation of the JBECC is that it allows the merging of military and civilian radar data on one screen. Now, the military can see civilian radar returns and transponder information without having to call the FAA. Reportedly, during the 9/11 attacks, the military’s inability to see the FAA’s data hampered its response to the hijackings. Terry Beane, the president of Brown International, will later explain: “A military radar will see there is something there but doesn’t know what it is. On 9/11, they were having to literally talk on the phone to each other. The problem was they didn’t know which planes were OK and which ones weren’t because they didn’t have all that integrated.” PRESS, 11/29/2004 The JBECC is also superior at tracking low-level aircraft like cruise missiles, something that has always been difficult for ground-based radar because of the earth’s curvature. It was successfully tested prior to 9/11 during the Amalgam Virgo 01 air defense exercise in June 2001 (see June 1-2, 2001). DEFENSE WEEKLY, 5/4/2001; GLOBALSECURITY (.ORG), 4/14/2002 The JBECC will later be deployed during important national security events such as the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics and the 2004 G8 summit in Sea Island, Georgia. PRESS, 11/29/2004 Entity Tags: Brown International, Joint-Based Expeditionary Connectivity Center, North American Aerospace Defense Command, US Department of the Air Force, Federal Aviation Administration Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline post 2001 May-August 2003: 9/11 Commission Has Difficulty Gaining Access to Recording of Air Threat Conference Members of the 9/11 Commission are informed that the air threat conference call, initiated by the military in response to the attacks on September 11, was recorded. This call reportedly began at around 9:37 a.m. on 9/11. Throughout the day, numerous key officials had participated in it, including the president, the vice president, the secretary of defense, plus senior officials from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD). Despite more than 18 months having passed since the attacks, Pentagon officials say they have not yet transcribed the tapes of the conference call. After the 9/11 Commission makes repeated requests, the Pentagon finally creates a classified transcript. On August 6, this is forwarded to the White House for an “executive-privilege review,” which is supposedly required because of Vice President Cheney’s participation in the call. The commission is then promised access to the 200-page transcript. However, the fact that it is not time coded may hinder the commission’s ability to outline an exact sequence of events, and commissioners say they may need to obtain the actual tapes recordings. Whether they are eventually allowed full or partial access to the tapes is unclear: The 9/11 Commission Report, released in 2004, will make numerous references to the “Department transcript, Air Threat Conference Call.” It will only make one reference to “the tape… of the air threat conference call,” which it says was used to help reconstruct events in the Presidential Emergency Operations Center (PEOC). The report will state that all the times it gives for the air threat conference call are estimates, believed to be accurate within a three-minute margin of error. This would suggest it did not have full access to the tape recordings. NEWS AND WORLD REPORT, 8/31/2003; 9/11 COMMISSION, 7/24/2004, PP. 37 AND 463-465 The recording of the air threat conference call is of particular significance, because the National Military Command Center (NMCC), which initiated the call, is—according to military instructions—the “focal point within Department of Defense for providing assistance” in response to hijackings in US airspace. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE, 6/1/2001 Entity Tags: White House, US Department of Defense, 9/11 Commission Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, 9/11 Timeline